


White Light

by Cicuta_virosa



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Lantern (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blackest Night, Character Death Fix, Getting Together, M/M, Resurrection, So much Character Death Fix, post-Blackest Night
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 15:24:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18055067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicuta_virosa/pseuds/Cicuta_virosa
Summary: Hal Jordan was a White Lantern for perhaps half a minute, and of course he totally changed the course of the whole universe in those thirty seconds. Bruce is half impressed, half exasperated, as he tries to learn the rules of his whole new world, tries to make sure Jordan's ultimate sacrifice wasn't in vain.Learning how to function again is complicated enough, mourning Jordan, for the second time isn't exactly easy either with all the things left unsaid between them, but neither would be impossible if the ghost of the Lantern didn't seem decided to haunt him.





	1. Prologue: how it started

**Author's Note:**

> I love the Blackest Night storyline, but I thought the resolve lacked panache. When Life and Death are present in flesh on the battlefield, you could think they would make a few more change than five or six resurected superheroes!

Once upon a time, Life began.

And to protect the source, the Guardians of the Universe hide the story behind that event, the Life Entity, inside Earth itself, and made their best for Earth to stay a backwater world.

For eons, it worked.

Until that day.

The War of Life is raging across the cosmos and on Earth, right on Coast City, fuelled by the billions of deaths who happened here years ago, Nekron is trying to destroy the Life Entity. Ganthet himself, for a moment, think everything is lost. Then Hal Jordan throws himself into the Entity and let It take over. The man who had been Hal Jordan yells, as pain courses through him. It’s a little like Parallax. He’s no more in control of his own body, and power sings in his veins. It’s too much. He’s human, not build to endure so much, but Hal never knew how to quit.

Around them, he can feel the battle, the heroes against the raised dead, the last stand against Nekron and the whispers of the Black Lantern Central Power Battery. He can feel the seven million victims of Coast City, his beloved city, his martyr city. He can feel so much.

So much death.

Unfair death, death who comes for the loved ones, for the lost ones, death who always come to quick.

Death, who took Central City, Death who took his friends, Death who took from his friends, Bruce’s parents and Kal’s world and Clark’s father, and Carol’s parents and Kyle’s mother and girlfriends, and John’s wife, and Jack and his wife, and their mother, and Xanshi and so many Lantern.

Death who took from his enemies, who took Sinestro’s wife and Atrocitus’s entire sector.

Death, who took his Dad.

No more.

_No more!_

Hal’s consciousness extents, extents, he’s the battlefield, and the people on it, he’s Clark and Diana and Mera, he’s the Titans and the League, he’s the whole spectrum of Light and Sinestro and Indigo 1 and Saint Walker and Ganthet and Guy and John, and even Dex-Star, the cat with a red ring.

He’s Bruce, Bruce and the things he never tried to say to him and now never will.

Hal Jordan, White Lantern, opens his eyes and gives everything to the Entity. At the end of all things, it’s like the past for Hal Jordan, like that day he wrestled control from Parallax just long enough to save the world. When he reignited the sun, the power crushing him.

“You would do more than die,” the Entity bonded to his soul whispers in his mind, “You would probably cease to exist in the most fundamental way. You would be unmade.”

And how it is his life that the Entity of Life Itself doesn’t know what Hal’s latest idea would bring.

Brightest Day doesn’t even begin to cover it. Hal glows, a beacon of White Light, of Power, of Life. Even the most powerful meta are forced to shield their eyes or to go blind. Nekron is as powerless in face of so much power than if he was inexistent.

And then the world changes.

 

 

 

The sound of retching is the first thing Bruce hear when he comes back online. He rolls over, mind full of cotton, and is greeted with the image of Superman on his knees. All around them, heroes are groaning, swearing, someone is crying and a few are violently ill on their shoes. Bruce swallows a few times, trying to chase the taste of ashes from his tongue.

What the fuck happened?

Coast City. The black rings, their dead coming back. They were fighting…. And then, what had happened then? A light. Only a better word would be needed, because that light was to the sun what the sun was to a flashlight.

His entire body protests when he stands up, it’s like he had gone ten rounds with Bane. Around them, everything is eerily silent. Nekron is gone. He remembers now, Jordan flew himself into the Light Entity and then…

“Jordan…” Bruce starts running.

In the middle of a crater, at the centre of the battlefield, there is a body, on his side, his back to Bruce, and he can only see the brown hair, the flight jacket.

A red blur reaches Jordan before him, and Flash, with gentle movements, turns the body.

Bruce can read the stupefaction in his body language and understands something is wrong before reaching them.

The flight suit, the jacket, the brown hair, it’s almost good, almost right. Even the shape of the jaw. But the eyes who open are the wrong colour, but the nose, the leaner shoulders, everything else is wrong.

“What happened...,” the man says, “The plane…who are you?”

“Oh fuck,” Barry whispers and Bruce could count on the fingers of one hand the time he heard him swear, and still have fingers left; “Fuck, you’re Martin Jordan.”

“Yes, I am,” and the pilot is already trying, and failing, to stand up.

“Flash, Batman,”, Superman says and Bruce suddenly remembers the rest of the world. He looks up to his friend, and then in the direction Superman is watching.

People.

Hundred, thousands of people, standing there, packed like sardines, watching the battlefield and the heroes, and the whispers of panic starting to ripple in the crowd. They need to do crowd control, right now, before they have a trampled on their hands.

“When? Where? They weren’t there before?” Flash protests, “Who put all the civilians here?” Barry asks, something slightly hysterical in his voice, because his mind is leaping to the same conclusion as Bruce’s own.

“They’re the casualty of Coast City,” Bruce says, and he knows he’s right, “They’re Jordan’s martyrs.”

 Batman starts organizing. It’s why he does best, and as his mind is still reeling, trying to understand, there is something comforting to tackling a problem he can solve. The seven million of victims of Mongul are in need of shelter, food, water, and a lot of explanations, since their latest memories are from just before the bombs hit the city.

The heroes immediately go to work, still unsteady on their legs; but after all, they only need to handle it a moment, until the National Guard come to help. And it’s a good thing help arrives, because a few moments after, a lot of communicators are activated with strange messages in the Justice League ears.


	2. Chapter 2

When Bruce comes back from a Justice League mission, he’s in the habits to use their space station teleporter, directly in the cave. Or sometimes, the batplane.

This time, he uses the zeta tube to reach one of his safe house in Gotham, dresses in civilian clothes and takes a car. Bruce Wayne was officially traveling for work when the battle happened, he can't suddenly appear in the Manor.

Not now. Not when….

When Bruce’s car arrives to the Manor’s gate, Dick is waiting for him, sitting across his bike. Bruce stops the car and goes sit on the grass, immediately joined by Dick.

They stay in silence, searching for words. What do you say when your entire world has been rewritten?

Finally, Bruce speaks:

“Tell me how it happened for you?”

“Well,” Dick starts, “it was a dark and stormy night in Gotham…

“

_Dick is fighting the Black Lantern impersonating his dead parents in a cemetery of Gotham, or perhaps the zombies who had been his parents once. He doesn’t really care what exactly this grotesque mimicry is, he just knows he needs them gone._

_Then the world is washed in white and, for the first time since he was five years old, he loses his footing and crashes on the marble of a tomb, taking quite a hit on the head from the angle._

_It’s the voice of Damian which help him emerge._

_“Grayson, Grayson!” the kid is calling, and it’s not the tone who pushes Dick closer to the real world, but the word. Damian is too smart, too well-trained, to use his name instead of Nightwing like that. The kid must be quite terrified._

_Dick opens his eyes and sit down, his hand already searching his escrima stick. No need. When he turns, his movement less controlled that it should but he can feel blood flowing from his head, he needs medical attention, he isn’t welcomed by the decaying flesh and the empty eye sockets of the Black Lantern._

_Instead, he sees two bodies on the grass, healthy flesh barely covered by red satin leotard. His mother’s head is abandoned on his Dad’s legs, their eyes peacefully closed. They seem like they just feel asleep, instead of being years dead. Damian is leaning down on them and Dick growls: “Dangerous,” because an entire sentence seems impossible right now._

_“Grayson,” Damian says, something reverent in his voice, “There is a pulse.”_

_Putting everyone in the Batmobile is a little like a game of Tetris, and too be honest, the sedative syringes in the glove boxes are in theory, not here to be sure resurrected relatives are left sleeping until the end of the crisis, but Dick knows he wouldn’t have the strength to not stay with them if they were conscious and right now, Gotham needs Robin and Nightwing._

_They leave his parents sleeping in the Batcave infirmary under Alfred’s guard and resume their patrol. It’s only teen minutes later after they leave the cave that Jim Gordon’s message reach them._

_“I didn’t know who else to contact,” the man explains, when they arrive to the Precinct, as Dick looks in the interrogation room and glimpses for the first time Martha and Thomas Wayne._

 

“And voilà,” Dick finishes, “You know everything on our end. Also, I understand your need for a pause before going to see them, with all the secrets you have to decide to say or not, but we can’t stay here forever.”

Bruce sighs. For the first time in forever, he doesn’t know what to do. The world is a mess. It’s a perfectly scientific observation, and Bruce isn’t even ashamed of not finding a more appropriate term. There is no other word for it. He spent the last two days collecting intel about the results of Jordan’s actions, and if he was more in touch with his feelings, he would probably admit to Dick that it was because he wasn’t ready to see his parents.

He feels he’s walking in a dream and trying to see them will make it shatters. That he will wake up on that battlefield and this time, they will lose against Nekron.

Not everyone was as much struck by terror as himself.

“My Mom”, Barry had said to Bruce, his brain stuck on the word, before running to Central.

“Pa,” Clark had murmured, face white, as he listened to a heartbeat he thought long extinguished.

They were still officially on call but Bruce hadn’t contacted them. There were enough League members without resurrected relatives, most of them new members Jordan hadn’t the time to knew, since he was quite busy in space those last years. Bruce should make sure it didn’t create two camps in the League, those whose life had been touched by Jordan’s final light, and those who hadn’t.

Instead of emotional honesty, he says: “The UNO is meeting in four days.”

“About the whole…”

“Yes. Our country is the most affected on Earth. From what we could gather, Jordan…. Jordan brought back dead people he knew about. Deaths the most primal part of him thought unfair. Not people who died of old age, like his grandparents. People he had mourned, or see people he knew mourn.”

“Like you and your parents.”

“Yes, and yours, since you’re the Robin he knew most, before spending more time on Oa than Earth.”

“So, that’s why my parents were brought back, and not Tim’s and Jason’s. Or why JFK is around again, because that’s something marking Hal learned in class when he was a kid and a President assassinated mark a child.”

“Well, apparently he also resurrected the last Tsar and all his children. And Louis XVII.”

“Who?”

“The child of the King the French decapitated. He died at ten years old of neglect in prison. The French government isn’t handling it very well, right now.”

“Hal Jordan, the closeted history nerd. Wait a minute, you said our country was the most affected on _Earth_?”

“Jordan was always the Go big or go home type. Half the Green Lantern took off to the sky, when the dust hadn’t even settled. Reports are coming from across the galaxy, relayed by John Steward. Dead Lantern suddenly very much not dead. Whole missing planets suddenly floating in place, perfectly fine. Apparently, Krypton is whole again, fully populated. And another planet named Xanshi, whose resurrection made John cry.”

“Fuck.”

“Yes, that sum it up nicely.”

“ _Bruce, what do we do_?”

“I have no idea.”


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

Diana had asked to be the one to go and meet Hal’s family. Someone had to. And let’s be honest, it couldn’t be Bruce, whose advice about grief was to dress up as a bird and to fight crime. It couldn’t be Arthur, whose resurrection had just throw Atlantis into a political crisis and couldn’t go gallivanting on dry lands right now. It couldn’t be Flash, who started crying silently every time Hal’s name came up. Oliver, for all his qualities, wasn’t someone you could inflict on grieving families, and Cyborg was not very discreet, as they had for now, succeed in keeping the White Lantern’s identity a secret.

It left Clark or Diana, because it would have been disrespectful to send anyone else than a Founder of the League, one of the Seven First. Diana had offered to do it. She wasn’t less ready to let go Steve out of her sight than Clark was his father, but it was easier to bring Steve to Central City with her, than it would have been for Clark to bring Johnathan Kent, because he should have bring too Martha and Superboy.

Central was effervescent. Hal’s final light had touched it more than any place on Earth and the crews were working all around the clock to be sure the resurrected seven millions would have a place to live. From the corners of her eyes, Diana could see the light show of the Green and Blue Lanterns who had stayed there after the battle to help the reconstruction. She knew John Stewart and his resurrected wife were in that number, and she promised herself she would go to meet Katma Tui after, and to introduce Steve to them. Everybody Steve knew, but her, was dead, and John was a good man. Steve could do with a few good men as friends, if he wanted to successfully live in this new century.

She looked up to the building, Steve’s hand in hers. Even after decades, and oh great Herah, those decades hadn’t existed for him how strange it was, he interpreted correctly her expression.

“It’s never easy to announce the dead of a soldier to his family,” he said.

“You had to do it?”

“A few times, yes.”

“It doesn’t seem very wise for a spy.”

“It was never under my true name, but I refused to let others announce the death of a team member to their family. When we lose our men, looking their loved ones in the eyes when they understand is the last we can do.”

“It seems like torturing yourself.”

“Probably a little. But you understand why I did it,” he said, very sure of himself.

“Yes, I do.”

He kissed her hand. His eyes were so clear. In the century of their separation, she had forgotten how blue they were, how brilliant.

“Let’s do this.”

Together, they took the elevator and searched until they found the door announcing:

_“Jim & Susan Jordan.”_

It was Steve who ringed the bell, but it was Diana the woman who opened the door saw first, and her face immediately crumbled, to Diana’s great surprise.

Without a word, the woman gestured for them to enter.

The living room was quite full: six adults, eight with Diana and Steve, and three children. Diana had looked up Hal’s file before coming and she identified easily Martin Jordan and his wife, Martin in his thirties and Jessica in his fifties, since they had come back at the age Hal had lost them, their two sons, their daughters in law, and their three grandchildren. Hal had looked like his father the most, but Jack, the older son, had the same colour of hair, and Jim had Hal’s eyes, and almost his nose. For a moment, she asked herself if they had his heart, that light in the dark which had changed the world in a way nobody totally understand yet. Life, life had sprung out from that heart. Hal Jordan had been a protector of the universe, to the last spark of will.

The woman who had opened the door, Susan, the wife of the younger Jordan’s brother, had joined his husband and children. The four of them hugged like it was the end of the world and Diana understood those four had long guessed the reason of her visit.

“You knew the truth about him,” she said and Jim nodded.

“For years,” he said, “and “I always knew it would one day come to that. But I hoped, I hoped so hard that hadn’t been him, that it was one of the others, and that he was busy with the reconstruction and would arrive soon…But if you’re here…”

“Could someone explain?” The older brother said, a man with the most atrocious facial hair she had ever seen. Instead of answering, she turned to Martin and Jessica Jordan.

“I am Diana of Themyscira, and this is Steve Trevor, my partner.”

“You’re from the Justice League,” Martin said proving he had spent the last few days learning about this whole new world, “I meet a few of your associates after my resurrection. I didn’t understand you would check up on us.”

“We’re not. Your life is yours to do as you want and the Justice League has no say in it. I’ve come here to talk about your son. I’ve come here to talk about Hal-”

“We don’t know where he is,” Jack interrupted her immediately, like she was ready to accuse Hal of something and he was trying to distance himself.

“Shut up,” Jim growled, and tears had started running on his face, but he did nothing to stop them.

“Jim?” His father asked.

“It was Hal, all right. That’s why Wonder Woman came to us. To tell us Hal was a hero and that it killed him and made everyone else alive.”

********

The first night after meeting his parents, and Dick’s, Bruce went to bed earlier than he had in years. He wasn’t ready to go on patrol, Gotham should have to do with Red Robin, Red Hood and the cops tonight. He had spent a calm evening with Damian, and his parents, and Dick and his parents. Conversations were stilled, difficult, and he could see Damian carefully picking up his words in a way he never had before. Bruce had feared his youngest reaction to his grandparents, who were everything he had been raised to disdain by Talia, but Damian wanted to impress them so much it was almost adorable, as much as Damian could be adorable.

Then, when everybody was already in bed, he had checked his League Communicator. The world was slowly finding his marks again. Diana had sent a rapport about her meeting with Jordan’s family. Apparently, his father wanted to meet other Lanterns.

Last, he checked the news. Some televangelists were already trying to make money on the events and he made a note to keep an eye on them. Jordan’s memories didn’t deserve that and Wayne Enterprise lawyers could always use the occasion to sharpen their teeth. The most followed news weren’t anymore for the resurrected human beings, but for the resurrected dodo and thylacine. A whole bunch of environmental activist had contacted the League to ask if the miracle could be replicated to other extinct species, like Jordan’ sacrifice could be measured to dead birds and mammals.

He sent the tablet flying across the room in a shameful act of anger and buried himself in his pillow, searching for sleep.

And he dreamed. Not that he never dreamed, it was a normal function of the human brain, but with his habitual lack of sleep, he had a tendency to never remember.

Not that time.

_He was walking on the moon._

_Who wouldn’t want to walk on the moon? The little boy he had been once was literally jumping around inside himself, because, the moon!! He wasn’t even wearing a space suit, only green light, surrounding him like a promise of safety. The light cradled him, offering him a total liberty of movement to jump, to explore. He didn’t fear it would fail and leave him alone in the void of space, because the light came from Jordan’s ring, and the ferocious willpower of Hal Jordan wasn’t in the habits to fail._

_“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Hal asked. He was sitting on a rock, watching the Earth. He was suited up in a Lantern uniform, but not the White Lantern suit he had been in the moment of his death._

_No, he was wearing green, softly glowing, but he wasn’t wearing his usual mask, and Bruce could see his cheekbones, his eyes, not covered by the usual light lenses. They were brown. Had he knew Hal’s eyes were brown? He was in the habits to only see him in uniform, eyes covered. He looked closer. The eyes were brown, but there was a glowing spark in them, green, of course._

_“Yes, my eyes are strange aren’t they? If you were close enough, you could see the Lantern sigil in them. That’s why I put lenses in my mask. Because it’s easier like that for people to forget that my first and foremost loyalty is to the Corps, not to Earth and the League. It’s easier to work with you when I don’t make you too uncomfortable.” Hal said without Bruce speaking, then he added: “It was always a crisis after another after another after another. Why did we never stopped to smell roses, as they say? I should have taken every member of the League who couldn’t breathe and fly in space in that sort of trip…”_

_“I’m not the first one you would have taken for a trip,” Bruce said, and Hal laughed, full-bellied._

_“Oh, Bruce, I would have offered you the moon on our first day, if I thought there was a chance you could take it.” And in the light that linked him to Jordan, Bruce knew it was true._

The surprise was so intense that it woke up Bruce and he went from the moon to his bed, sweating like after a marathon and his heart gripped in a vice.


	4. Chapter 4

Bruce is lying about something. Martha always knew when her little boy was dishonest. Years before, it was rare, and always childish things, but today, it’s probable it’s not about disappearing biscuits or what happens to his new pants. But even if the motives have changed, Martha Wayne knows when her son is lying to her, even now that he’s only two years younger than her.

At the beginning, she thought it could have been Richard’s true parentage and that Bruce didn’t want to admit he had impregnated and abandoned a woman when he was only sixteen, only to adopt the kid later when his official parents died, but Richard Grayson looks way too much like John Grayson to be something other than really his son.

So, that’s not Richard. But there is still a secret.

And not only Bruce. She’s pretty sure Damian and Richard, and Tim, that only came a few times and looks at them with painfully concealed sadness, since his own parents weren’t resurrected, know the truth.

Wayne Manor has a secret and it’s a big one.

She hasn’t talked about it with Thomas, not yet. She always was the more observant of the two and she doesn’t want him to be worried if she’s too imaginative.

For a half a second, she thought of asking Alfred, then dismissed it immediately. Alfred’s loyalty is to Bruce. She’s pretty sure Bruce doesn’t know that just before their deaths, Alfred had chosen to leave their service. Not that he was unhappy, he had said, but he missed his country. And now, decades after, he’s still there. For Bruce. That would be an insult to ask him Bruce’ secret and she has no intention to insult the man who raised and loved her son when she couldn’t.

For a time, she thought the secret was Richard’ sexual orientation, after she saw a young man leaves the Manor one late night, using Richard’s bedroom window. He didn’t see her and he was Richard’s age, perhaps a little bit younger, with black hair and a strange white lock. A few days after, she met Barbara Gordon and had to forget that theory. She still doesn’t know who is that young man, the man who needed to speak to Dick in the middle of the night, but whatever he’s, it isn’t Richard’s lover, because her…her grandson, is hopelessly devoted to Miss Gordon.

Martha watches her son playing some complicated game of Go with Damian, and her heart beats almost painfully in her chest. Bruce seemed almost afraid when he saw them again. Like Thomas and her could reject him, find him unworthy. She fears that all this years, he put them on a pedestal and always found himself lacking. But now she’s alive, Thomas is alive and they can make him realize than their love is unconditional.

Manor Wayne has a secret.

But she can wait to learn it.

*************************

Diana tries to find her clothes in silence, but Amazon don’t see in the dark, and Steve moves in the bed, clicks on the light.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” she says in excuse.   

“No,” he yawns, hair everywhere, “no, it’s ok. What happened? Is there a problem?”

“No, there isn’t. I just wanted to go to the Watchtower. John Stewart and the rest of the Honor Guards Lanterns are coming from Oa to meet Hal’s family, and I wanted to be there.”

“You feel responsible for the Jordan.”

She sit next to him on the bed. The headboard is wobbly from two nights ago but they’re too busy right now to do something about it.

“His brother’s tears touched me,” she admits without shame, because she had hundreds of sisters and understand the pain of losing a sibling. “There is joy for all new lives in the world, for all the people resurrected-“ she touches his lips with her fingers in a soft caress, marvelling as always that he’s there, with her, alive, may Hal Jordan finds untold delights in the Elysium, “- and his own family is grieving.”

He takes her hand, kisses her wrist.

“May I come? I would happy to learn more about your brother in arms. About the man who gave me back to you.”

*******************************

Bruce arrived hours before in the Watchtower. Officially, he’s in Washington for the day, but he needed a moment alone before meeting. He’s not forced to be there. In fact, everybody seemed surprised when he declared he would be. He’s never on board to meet civilians. He drinks his coffee slowly, watching Earth below. He’s tired, even if he has been sleeping more than in years. But his sleep isn’t restful. He dreamed of Jordan again last night, and the night before and this is the reason he came earlier, because the last dream had been in this room itself, a replay of old time, a fight between Hal and him. How long ago? He isn’t sure. The first human Green Lantern was the only person that came close to a screaming match with Batman, and in several occasions!

In his sleep, it had been different.

_The room was darker that it was supposed to be and Jordan more glowing than he was in the habits to be. He always dimmed the glow during the meetings, for the comfort of his team mates. But here he was, glowing like a star in a fairy-tale. He was watching himself and Batman exchange insults and barbs and Bruce went to stand next to him._

_“It’s strange,” Jordan said, “There were so many fights and I remember that one more than any other.”_

_Bruce searches his mind._

_“It was the first one,” he says._

_“Yes. Did you ever asked yourself, if we didn’t form bad habits that day? If we had taken a minute to calm…”_

_“You never knew how to do that.”_

_“I hadn’t slept in thirty hours and had my arm broken by an interdimensional alien, I think it can excuse my temper.”_

_“You’re always like that-“_

_“-Well, not a wink of sleep for three days and interdimensional aliens are a bad habits, so they can take the fall for a lot of my reactions. But you, you were supposed to be better than me-”_

_“No!” Bruce interrupted and Jordan turned to him, surprised. On the contrary of the younger version of the memory-Jordan, he wasn’t wearing his mask, again._

_“You were the best of us,” Bruce said softly, facing that dead man who had given him back his parents, who had given back so much to the world and died for reward. Those incredible cheekbones pinked, as Jordan searched for words, without a comeback for the first time, and Bruce…._

Bruce woke up.

He examines the room, chasing whispers of his dream, of long lost memories, when the door opens.

Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash. Of course. They, too, want to be there for the Jordan. Bruce is giving it four weeks, no more, until Flash confesses his secret identity to his dead best friend family. In the League, he’s one of those taking Hal’s death the harder, perhaps because he was dead himself the first time happened, when Hal was possessed by Parallax and died. For the others, it’s the second time mourning Hal.

Behind them, Martin Jordan, his two sons, his wife. Apparently, the children and the daughters in law aren’t there, for now.

They shuffle around the table, and he doesn’t offer salutations, but moves far away from the view, to let them admire Earth. And just at that moment, there is a light bursting, next to the moon, a flash of green, growing larger to an impossible speed.

The first time Martin Jordan sees the Green Lantern Corps is flying in space, impossibly graceful, impossibly radiant, as his son was, as it should be.


	5. Chapter 5

Katma Tui had counted: she had been dead five years six months two weeks and three Earth days before Hal Jordan had taken the White Lantern road. She feels like something should mark her body, some scars, some marks, or a sign of what happened. It feels like cheating that John is more marked by her death than herself. In the weeks since it happened, he has been incapable of being separated from her and his nights are plagued by nightmares where her resurrection was only a trick. He wakes up with a jolt, his hands already searching for her and they press against each other until they can’t tell where one finish and the other start. They go together to Xanshi, to Krypton, to Oa, together they help to expand Coast City to offer a place to live to the seven billions not dead anymore martyrs of the city.

Being resurrected is only a beginning.

John changed in those years, and she didn’t, and the world is a different place that she needs to relearn, because as much as she loves John, and really she adores that man , well being offered a second chance in life should open a life filled with more than being a spouse.

She knows she still wants to be a Lantern, it’s a first step, even if even the Corps are a strange place right now. Hal resurrected two hundred eighty-eight Lanterns, it’s the first time since their creation that their number grows that way, since there two hundred eighty-eight Lanterns are alive and kicking, and meeting the ones who were chosen after their death. The last one resurrected had been killed something like twelve minutes before their resurrection, right in front of Hal during battle, and the first one had been Abin Sur himself.

When the League contacts John, a lot of people wants to come to meet Hal’s family, and the two hundred eighty-eight Lanterns first, but John remarks dryly that the reunion room wasn’t big enough.

So, John and Kyle, Katma, Abin Sur, Tomar-Re and Kilowog, in company of Ganthet and Sayd, are the ones who will meet with the League and the Jordan. But before, they are all there, the two hundred eighty-eight Lanterns of course, and a big chunk of the Corps, all those who aren’t really needed in other places right there, right now, they’re there, flying around Earth in formation, a demonstration of power just for Hal’s family.

Her hand in John’s, Kama flies with her Corp, with her brothers and sisters, and it’s like a love letter to the lost one, to Hal, her friend, her fellow Lantern, who gave them a second chance.

 _Look at us_ , it says, _look at us, we’re the Corps, we are his family too, and we mourn him too, look at us, he wasn’t alone, he was a part of something he loved so much and until the end of the universe, the Corps will repeat his name and he will live in us…Look at us, Hal Jordan was our Blackest Night, once, was our almost-end, and he was our Brightest Day too, and we are stronger for him, and we will shine in his memory. Look at us, evil, for our greatest Lantern has fallen, but our fight will never be done._

They fly and they shine and for a moment in the void of space, the stylised shape of a Lantern, the sign of the Corps, made from all their auras, burns brighter than the sun.

**********************************

Guy refused to meet the Jordan. His relationship with the idea of family is complicated, and his own friendship with Hal was too. He left Earth’s orbits days ago: he’s part of the Green Lantern delegation in the newly resurrected Sector 666. Just because the worst genocide in galactic history was undone by Hal doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and the Corps has sent a delegation, taking back Atrocitus himself who lost his rage and his red ring, when he learned the miracle. It will probably become a Sector forbidden to the Green Lantern: even if it was the Manhunters crime, the Green Lantern Corps is still associated with the Guardians.

But it’s important to go. To meet officials and those worlds and to catch them up to the thousands of years since their deaths, and to offer excuses, not that they were the ones guilty in the first place, but they’re the only ones in position to do it, since the Manhunters are machines, and the Guardians won’t.

Guy isn’t the most diplomatic of men: he prefers to let the other Lanterns do the talking, with the back-up of Saint Walker who saved Atrocitus’ life when the rage left him and his body failed without the power of his ring.

But he wants to be there, even if he doesn’t participate.

Because Hal, his friend, his brother in the Light, gave his life for those people too, and Guy won’t let anyone mess that up. An entire sector died and was reborn, and people are people, whatever the specie: this sort of situation is a powder keg. And Guy really, really doesn’t want to see a war born here. So he stays there, silent, decided to protect a part of Hal’s legacy.

************************************

Aliens.

Aliens!!

Martin admired in silence their demonstration of power, the pilot in him stunned by the grace of the flight. No planes could ever rival with the Lanterns, he already knows it, even in this strange future of space ships.

And then they came closer, stopped, like they wanted to examine him.

_Aliens!!!!_

Some big, some tall, some shaped so strangely that Martin doesn’t understand how they work. And all clad in green, light spilling out of them. They look at him through the bay of the Watchtower and he tries to imagine Hal like them, flying through space wearing light, righting wrong and protecting the innocents.

It’s difficult to put that image on the eight years old boy he remembers, because in his mind, Hal is still a child, and it seems a terrible weight to be a Lantern, even for an adult.

A few of them leave the group and fly to an airlock and a minute after, they’re there, those people his son chose as brothers in arms. A young man with black hair immediately hugs Jim and then his wife, Martin hadn’t realized they had already meet other Lanterns, but of course, they knew the truth, they meet some of them before.

One of the other, a man with black skin that Martin is almost sure is human, even if light is spilling from his eyes, reach out a hand:

“John Stewart, sir. It’s an honour to meet you.”

*******************

Hal’s mother is weeping. This isn’t surprising since the family insisted to know everything, all they could tell them, and the last chapter had been Parallax. The meeting is in pause, to give her time to find her bearing. She is with her husband and oldest son, and that son’s wife, and the other left the room to give them privacy.

Flash stayed with them, because ten minutes in the meetings, as they were telling the Jordan about the beginning of the League, he took off his cowl and told them his real name. John is pretty sure Barry started to cry too a moment ago. Barry had been dead during the horrors of Parallax, and he probably never heard the tale in details.

John is watching Earth from the launching bay, his wife next to him. The view is beautiful and sharing it with her makes it even more precious. John has been in every corner of the universe, or almost, he has seen wonders impossible and extraordinary, but the simple vision of Earth still appease some sort of craving for home.

From the corner of his eyes, he sees Kyle speaking with Jim and Sue Jordan, and his posture is more relaxed than it had been his days, since the last battle in fact, and come on, John knows him, knows the signs, and he knew Kyle had had contact with those two, during the Parallax era, when nobody knew it was some parasite entity, that Hal had simply snapped, but he hadn’t realized… The two of them, really Kyle? John hopes the younger human Lantern has no intention to go at it again, because he already had one alive girlfriend and two resurrected ones and that seems like enough trouble!

“John?” Katma says, still watching Earth.

“Yes?”

“I think I will request a transfer.” And he immediately forgets everything about Kyle and his possible threesome with the married couple, panic really not worthy of a Lantern in his mind.

“I want to stay in this Sector,” she says, “Perhaps go back to visit my world sometimes, but…yes, I would like to protect Hal’ sector. And Earth. With you.”

And John has never been happier, even more than he was before her death, because he realizes more how lucky he is, how happiness can be short and how it should be savoured. In the back of his mind, the knowledge of the blood which brought that is the only stain on his joy.

 

**********************

Bruce dreams.

Again.

_It’s a team up. He doesn’t remember which year it is, and it isn’t really important. It was in the beginning, when meeting an alien life form was still new and strange, world changing, when Dick was still Robin, even if he began to chafe under that mantle._

_Hal had come to Gotham, in pursuit of a bounty hunter from a world which name Bruce can’t pronounce even now, even with his gift for language. Bruce was younger, more arrogant: he didn’t understand that Hal could have been in and out of his town, his target thrown in a cell of Oa, long before Batman remarked his presence, if necessary. For all the shining, the Lanterns can be sneaky if necessary, when in contact with civilisations not advanced enough for space travel._

_But Hal had come to him, and he looks at them, younger him and younger Hal in the Batcave, examining crime scenes photos on the computer and discussing the best approach, Dick close enough to listen to Hal’s tales of other worlds with literal stars in his eyes._

_Bruce knows he’s dreaming. In those strange dreams, he always knows. It was years ago and Hal is dead, and now Bruce examines that past version and despairs how young and carefree Hal looks._

_He had forgotten, after Parallax, forgotten that Hal could look like that, and dreaming Bruce can’t stop a grimace to some of his younger self remarks. He thought he knew so much at the time, he had so much to learn about the universe, he thought Hal couldn’t find the bounty hunter without him. Now, he knows more about the Oan technology: Hal really didn’t need any help._

_Behind him, another Hal, harder, older, is glowing and Bruce can’t stop the question: “Why did you come to me instead of simply finding that alien and quietly skipping town?”_

_“Because I wanted to spend time with you. At the time, I justified it to myself as a way to reinforce the League, to create trust between us and to better know your strength and your weakness.”_

_And Bruce is nodding because of course it makes sense to profile a new ally and to downplay your own abilities, it can be useful later, when the possible meaning of “justified”, finally register._

_“Wait, what do you mean….”_

_Hal laughs, free with his emotions like always, but suspiciously not meeting his gaze:_

_“Bruce, as I said, I came to you that day because I wanted to spend time with you. And there was no other reason. I was just too young and stupid to say it to you simply.”_

When Bruce wakes up, he searches of the backlog of the Cave. That partnership had been the last Thanksgiving before Dick left the Manor. Hal had caught his guy, if it was male, Bruce isn’t totally sure and frankly doesn’t care about alien gender that much, and stayed longer that was strictly necessary, and younger Bruce had thought Hal was just a nuisance. Now, as he drinks his second cup of coffee, he thinks Hal had thought sad to launch himself alone in space with a prisoner on that day, thinks it was the time Hal was estranged with his family, and that younger Bruce was an idiot and should have offered to share that dinner with Hal.

Dick had always loved Hal, he would have been delighted, and Hal would have had the warmth of that moment, Alfred’s turkey and friends and the light of a fire in the chimney, to warm him the next time he had to be the last green line of defence against chaos and space genocide, armed with only his will and his inner light.

He thinks of all those times Hal was in the Cave for a mission and Alfred always brought sandwiches and coffee, but Bruce can’t remember, even once, offering to Hal to stay a little after, to share a real meal, a game of chess or something else, to rest a moment in the Manor, that piece of peace and family who shielded Bruce against the darkness of the mission, before releasing him into the void of space. The missions had been closed, and Bruce had gone up, to the Manor and his sons and his beloved father figure, and Hal had fly off to another mission, because he covered an entire sector, or sometimes to an empty appartement, when it hadn't been to Barry's couch because he had been evicted, again.

Bruce always take his coffee black, no milk, no sugar, but that morning, the coffee is particularly bitter. He thinks of Hal, of things unsaid, of regrets. When Hal was Parallax, when they didn’t know it wasn’t really him, he had thought it was proof he had been right to never say anything about the spark that even him, emotionally stunned as he could be, had begun to notice.

Then Hal had died, and Bruce had mourned, as much as he pretended he thought it was only another supervillain they wouldn’t have to fear, and then Hal was alive, again, and Bruce had still said nothing. He had made Hal work hard to rebuild the beginning of some semblance of trust, and he had never said anything.

And now Hal was dead again and Bruce had lost his chance to ever speak about that spark, that almost, that maybe….

He thinks about lost chances and truths never said. He puts his empty mug down, gives himself another second of reflexion, then he send a message.

To his Robins, past and present, to Barbara, to Kate. And to be sure Jason will come, he includes the subject of that debate he wants to have with them.

“I want to tell my parents the truth,” he writes, then he leaves the Cave, direction the kitchen. Dick is in Blüdhaven this morning, to officially resign because he’s moving in with Barbara and she wishes to stay in Gotham, and he will need a few hours to be back.

Bruce has time to beg Alfred for biscuits, and for advice about confessing a vigilant life spent disguised as a flying rodent.


	6. Chapter 6

_Conversation in Wayne Manor:_

 

“Don’t you think Bruce is strange those days?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s Dick under the cowl nine days, sorry nine nights, of ten right now.”

“Perhaps his parents…I mean, it’s not exactly easy to hear your son is dressing up as a bat to beat up bad guys.”

“And the parents of Dick took it better?”

“Well, they’re younger, fitter…”

“I don’t think how that would change a parent’s reaction to a child taking up vigilantism? “

“If you can’t stop your son from a dangerous life, join him? They’re not ready for patrols right now, because acrobatics are not the only prerequisite to be a vigilante, but they are undergoing combat training, police work training, language, and all that jazz.”

“They took it really well.”

“In a way.”

“Can’t you be clear, for once?”

“Things are a little colder between them and Bruce, right now. They are, and it’s quite understandable, angry at him for making Dick part of that world.”

“And Bruce?”

“I’m not sure he realized they’re furious at him, to be totally honest….I’m worried about him. He seems…a little absent.”

“He has been at war for years. Perhaps, with the return of his parents, his body is finally catching up all the rest he never authorized himself.”

“I hope you’re right.”

*****

Bruce sleeps.

Bruce dreams.

Of Hal.

Always, every night, and soon every afternoon and every morning.

He dreams of old memories.

_Hal in the Watchtower, ring discarded and trying his luck at hand to hand against the Batman. He always lost, of course, Bruce wasn’t the most trained human on Earth for nothing, but it was more a work-out to take Hal down than Bruce ever would admit._

_Hal in Gotham, in that eternal flight jacket, trailing after Malone like an unruly puppy. That mission had been horrible for the two of them._

_Hal working with Superman, Hal arriving just in time to rescue them in a mission, in another, Hal patiently teaching Dick how to know if a substance found on a crime scene was of extra-terrestrial origins._

_Hal, neck deep in the invading aliens of the week and still grinning like a loon, unbended, unbroken._

_Halo joking with Diana, Hal flying around the Watchtower with Kyle, Hal with his hands full of sludge…_

He dreams of moments that never happened.

_Hal in the kitchen in the Manor, making Bruce’s children his mother’s famous pancakes, and Alfred protesting in the backcround about his kitchen being used by another._

_Hal in his quarters in the Watchtower, leaning down on Bruce’s chesscase, the one Clark gifted him once and that he keeps there._

_Hal in the garden, his head on Bruce’s knees, sleeping off his last mission, and Bruce’s fingers playing in his hair._

_Hal on Oa, taking Bruce on his first tour of the Green Lantern HQ, and the way he hiddes terribly how he wants Bruce’s to like it, that fareway world that was Hal’s mission, and the hundred of aliens which are his brother’s in arms, the same as the League._

_Hal’s taking Bruce flying, with his ring, with a plane, and the sheer joy radiating of him as they defy gravity and every smart speed limits’ ideas._

_Hal on an alien world, serious and stern, a Lantern of Oa, and then after the defeat of the criminal they’re tracking, Hal’s joking nicely with the people they saved, in a way Bruce neve knew how._

_Hal in Bruce’s bed, just sleeping, his face peacefull for once, and just a glimplse of skin between the sheets._

Bruce dreams, again and again, and now everytime he wakes up, he’s disappointed Hal isn’t there. Now everytime he wakes up, he only thing of the next time he will sleep, and see Hal again.


	7. Chapter 7

“Bruce? Bruce, wake up!”

A hand, on his shoulder, insisting, not letting go, and he finally emerges, with great difficulties, as if he was struggling against molasses.

Leaning down on him, Diana, something worried in the corner of her mouth. She’s in a ceremonial dress, a golden tiara on her hair, more princess than warrior.

“What is…” His voice is dry, and he clears his throat, before trying again:

“What are you doing in my bedroom? Is there a problem?”

“No, if you except we’re waiting for you at the Watchtower. You’re more than one hour late.”

“Late?”

“The depart for Oa?”

“Oa?”

“Oh Bruce…”

Her hand reaching, touching his forehead, fresh, like he’s an ill child. She’s smelling of citrus, and he suddenly remembered that it’s been months since they trained together, since he took time for her, one of his closest friends. Did he even congratulate her on her engagement, he can’t remember.

“Perhaps you should stay here. You need a doctor.”

“No!! No. Give me a minute for a shower. Why are we going on Oa?”

“Bruce, you were there, we discussed it.”

“Indulge me, I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“The Corps invited the Justice League, they’re having a ceremony for the one year of Hal’s death.”

“Were they drunk? Is isn’t one year…”

“Of course, it is, Bruce,” Diana says, very carefully and the frown is getting more accentuated, she’s ready to throw him over her shoulder to bring him to the Watchtower infirmary, he’s sure of it.

Bruce takes a peek through the window. The snow, which he was so sure was there yesterday, has let place to the colours of spring. He has lost months dreaming of Hal, they seemed made of mist in his mind and Bruce is sure he’s supposed to be afraid, but he can’t bother. The dreams seem more real than life. Now that’s he’s actively trying to remember, there are images, he’s pretty sure Dick forced him into a picnic, yesterday, or perhaps last week, and even Jason was there, and looked at Bruce with the same painful intensity people have those days. Like he was escaping them. He’s pretty sure his mother cried. Didn’t Dick say something about Barbara and him? He can’t remember…He knows his son told him something important, and he can’t remember what it is.

“Oa,” he says to Diana, “I want…I want to pay my respects to Hal. And then, perhaps….”

“Help?”

“Yes. Didn’t we have this conversation already?”

“Two times. But this time, you’ll seek help, even if I have to deliver you hogtied in my lasso to a professional. Now dress. Half the galaxy will be there, being late wouldn’t be quite diplomatic.”

“Speaking like a true princess, raised for the crown.”

“It’s more than if I let you handle the League’s diplomacy, we wouldn’t even officially exist.”

Oa was very far away, or perhaps it was Earth than was really a backwater’s world, like Hal had joked sometimes. John and Katma are in charge of bringing the Earth’s visitors, because it would be days in space ships, and Bruce can’t stop a shiver when the green sphere close around them. He dislikes that. He knows John’s will is not the sort to fail but….it isn’t the same thing than being cradled in Hal’s light. His heart misses a beat as Hal smiles in his mind, and he can fell, like a weight, Clark’s stare. If he doesn’t go himself to a doctor when they arrived back to Earth, Diana won’t be the only one enforcing his need for help.

Oa is…Oa is green, and orbited by a live planet who is a Green Lantern too, apparently, because live planets are now a thing in Bruce’s life.

Oa is also way, way too much familiar, and Bruce stumbles in surprise once they are on the ground again. He has seen this skyline, and those buildings, as strange and alien as they are. He has seen them, again and again and again in his dreams.

He would have fallen if Diana’s arm hadn’t been there, strong around him.

“Bruce? A medic!!”

“No. No, just…Diana, there is something wrong with my dreams. There is something going strange with my mind.”

“We should never have let you co-“

“Diana, I have been dreaming of this place!”

Clark’s hands, big and so warm around his shoulders he can almost feel the warmth through the Kevlar, even if it’s psychosomatic. Killowog is the same, Bruce knows it, even if Killowog never touched him, even if he’s not sure they have talked to each other, but Bruce knows the calm comfort of those strong hands on his shoulders and the pleasure of late nights conversation with one of his best friends in the galaxy, transcending species.

“Bruce, we miss him too.”

“For Fuck’s sake, you aren’t listening!”

At the end, the Guardians scan him, right in front of the Central Battery. He’s pretty sure they are humouring him, and only doing it because John insisted, and that John insisted only because Diana wouldn’t bulge, but if blue aliens think he’s half hysterical is the only way to get what he wants, he will take it.

The Guardians stay silent a long time when they are done, furtive glances at each other, like they can’t quite believe what they found.

“So?” Barry asks, because patience has never been exactly this forte, “What’s wrong with our friend?”

“Nothing,” a Guardian says.”

“He’s seeing alien worlds in his dreams, I’m pretty sur-“

“There is nothing wrong with your friend, Barry Allen of Earth, his mind is simply struggling to remember which parts are his, and which parts aren’t.”

“… If you think that’s clear…”

A Guardian floats down to Bruce, who has to close his eyes against disorientation. It’s like he has lived this scene dozen, perhaps hundreds of times before, and all those times are presenting himself to his mind, as dozen, perhaps hundreds of Guardians, open their mouth to give him a new mission.

A small blue hand pats his shoulder, and the distortion stops.

“There is nothing wrong with you, Bruce Wayne of Earth, and you know us, you know Oa, because Hal Jordan’s soul is nested right with yours.”


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

For a year-old problem which, if the Guardians have to be believed, would have in the long term cost Bruce his sanity and perhaps his life, the resolution is strangely quick and easy.

The fact that they are celebrating that day the anniversary of Hal’s sacrifice makes it the perfect moment to bring him back to life. Not because of the anniversary thing, but simply because all Green Lanterns are here, on Oa, to honour Hal.

And there is nothing, almost nothing, such a concentration of will can’t accomplish.

Bruce sit down in front of the Central Battery, his heart in his throat. On the side of the battery, he can see the League, the Guardian and Hal’s family, faces stern as they wait, probably like him oscillating between hope and desire to not get heartbroken again if it doesn’t work.

Behind Bruce, Abin Sur, Hal’s predecessor, and Kyle, the one who replaced Hal during that whole Parallax’s debacle. They put one hand on Bruce’s shoulders. Behind Abin Sur, Killowog and Kama Sui, hands on Abin Sur’s shoulders and behind Kyle, John and Guy, and behind every one of them, two other Green Lantern, their hands on their shoulders. Behind Bruce, the entire Corp, in a long, decided, wilful link.  Hands place themselves on shoulders, claws place themselves on back, on rock, on flesh, on feathers. No matters how, they join each other, two Lanterns behind one, in a long figure.

Bruce can see the only Blue Lantern smiling at him, next to Diana, and something in him knows the name of the strange alien, something names him friend and ally, even if Bruce had perhaps talked to him twice in his life.

“In brightest day,” Abin Sur starts, and every other Lantern continues. The words of the Lantern Oath had never more sounded like a prayer. The prayer of a faith who doesn’t wait for a God or a Goddess, who takes things in its own hands and spits in fate’s eyes with a crazy grin. Bruce can feel power going through him. Will. Green. The stubbornness of people refusing the world’s unfairness. Green. The first prey which refused to run when the predators had chosen another member of the herd, who stayed back and fought. Green. The will of thousands of Lanterns refusing injustice and violence and standing up, again and again and again, against violence and death and injustice. Green. Worlds after worlds. Green. Generations after generations. Green. The Lantern have made the world a better place, more than the Guardians could ever have imagined. Green.

Bruce is a Lantern, alone against an armada, he’s the shield of a lost, agricultural world coveted by slavers, he’s the last chance of justice of a murdered child on a space station, he’s on the run with a young priest, ready to throw himself between the man and the murderers, he’s alone and his sector is enormous, he’s alone and beaten down and he stands up, again and again, and Will is a flame in his soul, and the Oath is a spark who ignited him and he will never stop burning.

He’s a Green Lantern and he will fights to the death for people and it’s too much, it’s a too great power, Bruce was never chosen for that and he yells, because it burns, because the entire power of the Central Battery is running through the entire Corp, directly into him, and he’s not Hal, he’s not Hal and he can’t.

The world turns green and the colour is seen fourteen galaxy away.

*******

Bruce wakes up in Oa’s infirmary. Everything is green, even if it’s not construct.

Some strange aliens instruments gently bip around him and his headache is worst that the time Diana had to dig him up from underneath two buildings.

And Hal Jordan is in bed with him, softly snoring, his face smashed against Bruce’s shoulder and his arms around Bruce’s waist. Bruce can feel the strange, icy metal of the Green Lantern ring on Hal’s finger against his side. The bed is too small for two grown men with shoulders like JLA’s members have, and on the other side, a deserted bed gives evidence than Hal didn’t start their stay in the infirmary against Bruce and made the decision himself.

Bruce’s first movement is to wake him up and send him packing to his own bed. He doesn’t do it. They aren’t monitored, someone would have come to send Hal to his own bed. And Hal is sleeping. Nobody would ever know Bruce woke up. He could just…stay there. With Hal’s weight against him. Nobody would ever know. He could just stay there, pretend he stayed asleep, when Hal wakes up again, or when somebody comes, whichever comes first. Since they’re in Bruce’s bed, people will know it was Hal who moved and invaded Bruce.

Nobody will ever know Bruce stays awake for almost two hours, simply listening to Hal breathing, before sleep takes him again.


End file.
